"I can only guess that Bunny left the store and hightailed it to the Brunelles' shop. Whether Jake overheard her conversation with Betsy or somehow ran into her and got suspicious is anyone's guess, but make no mistake: Bunny was murdered because she knew too much."
"And the frame?"
"Unrelated to the murder," she shrugged. "Either Maggie found a way to engineer the heist, or someone, like a maid or a housekeeper, realized what it was worth and took it."
"Someone who can recognize a Baroque silver-leaf picture frame?"
"Maybe there's another explanation, but I don't see how it could have anything to do with Weston's death."
"Me neither. So what do we do about Jake Brunelle? I know we have no solid evidence, but if the guy killed Bunny because she might turn him in, wouldn't he do the same thing to his wife if he thought she suspected him?"
"I was just thinking the same thing. We have to get Mills over there, and quick."
She pulled the cell phone from her back pocket and began to dial before noticing that she had no signal. "Grrr ... outhouses, no cell phone service, no electricity, and a killer on the loose. Where the hell did we move to, Nick?"
"I don't know, but we'd better take the car and try to call Mills from the road before it's too late."
CHAPTER.
19.
NICK DROVE AS fast as safely possible down Route 4 while Stella monitored her cell phone for the slightest hint of reception. "I thought Mills said we got service on this road," she complained.
"He meant the road outside our house, not the camp," he corrected as he stepped on the brakes. "We're stopping. Why are we stopping? What the hell is this?"
Ahead, a coach bus marked as being part of Happy Trail Bus Tours turned on its yellow flashers and crept along the two-way highway.
"Can you go around them?"
"I can't see what's coming, and it's a double-lined road."
A set of red lights came aglow as the bus ground to a halt in the middle of the traffic lane.
"What the-? Oh, come on! Why are you stopping?"
"Oh, Nick, we have to go around them somehow!"
"Don't worry, I'm on it." He swerved onto the shoulder of the road and began to accelerate in an attempt to overtake the bus from the right-hand side.
As the front bumper of the Smart car reached the back of the bus, the larger vehicle opened its doors, issuing forth an army of camera-toting senior citizens onto the dusty shoulder and outward into an adjacent field.
Nick slammed on the brakes.
"Leaf peepers," he and Stella said in unison.
"I can't believe it. The bus stopped in the middle of the road and is blocking traffic so that a bunch of tourists can take pictures of leaves."
"Let me handle this." Stella hopped out of the passenger-side door and fought her way through the crowd that had assembled alongside the bus.
"Hey," the passengers shouted as she walked in front of their camera lenses and bumped shoulders with everyone in her path.
"How rude," one woman could be heard remarking. "If this is what the locals are like, I'm glad we're staying in New Hampshire tonight."
"Believe me, lady, the state of Vermont heaves a collective sigh of relief as well," Stella replied as she stepped onto the bus through the open doors. There she found the driver, a heavyset man in his mid-thirties, sweating profusely and munching on a bag of Fritos.
"Sir? Sir, we need to get around you. Would you mind pulling onto the shoulder?"
"Ma'am, I'm not allowed to move this bus until every passenger is inside and safely seated."
"But this is urgent-a matter of life and death!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but those are the rules."
"How about flagging us past? Can you do that?"
The driver shook his head and kept on munching. "Those yellow flashers mean you can't pass."
"That's just for school buses. These are grown adults who should know better than to cross a busy roadway without looking."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry. If you have an issue, you'll have to take it up with the bus company-" he started, but Stella had already gotten off the bus and was standing in the lane of oncoming traffic.
"Come on, honey," she screamed at the top of her lungs. "It's clear!"
Nick revved the engine of the Smart car, causing the senior citizens in the nearby field to gape at him in horror. Shifting quickly into reverse and then into drive, he navigated around the bus and back into the right-hand lane before pulling to a complete halt at Stella's feet.
She opened the passenger-side door and jumped inside. "Don't think I've ever seen this car move so fast."
"Don't think I've ever heard you shout so loud when you weren't angry."
Nick pressed the accelerator, sending the vehicle speeding down the road at full throttle and reaching the Brunelles' shop five minutes later.
Stella and Nick stepped out of their respective sides of the car and quietly shut their doors. "I don't see the Brunelle Construction truck parked around here," Stella noted, "so maybe we're in luck and Jake's not home."
She led the way through the open front door of the building. Downstairs, the office and shop area were devoid of both light and people, but above them, they could hear the sound of country music and the creaking of floorboards.
Nick picked up the receiver of the front desk telephone and handed it to his wife. "First things first."
With a nod, Stella dialed the Windsor County Sheriff's Office and asked for Mills. Her call was directed to his desk, but alas, it was an automated voice mail system, and not the sheriff, that answered.
"Hi Sheriff Mills, it's Stella Buckley. We're at Brunelle Construction. Please come out here as soon as you can. We have reason to believe that Jake Brunelle is the killer." She hung up the phone and drew a deep breath.
"Maybe we should wait until he gets here?"
"And take the chance that Jake will come back in the meantime? No, we need to get to Betsy and warn her. I'll go upstairs and talk to her. You stay here and keep a watch for Jake. While you're watching, see if you can't find something around here that ties him to the murders."
Nick nodded in agreement and watched as Stella set off through the darkened shop. With one eye trained on the office window, he flipped through the stack of papers that were piled on Betsy's makeshift desk, only to encounter page after page of unpaid invoices.
The Brunelles' mounting debt provided Jake Brunelle with a strong motive for murdering Weston, but it still wasn't the concrete evidence they needed. With a deep breath, Nick returned the stack of papers to Betsy's desk and, reticent to step into the role of hacker, decided to search the office's single file cabinet before facing the challenge of navigating the company computer.
As the setting sun cast a purple hue on the unlit office, Nick moved toward the monolithic black cabinet at the back of the room. Picking his way through the gathering darkness of the old maintenance building, Nick failed to notice the thick extension cord that trailed across the office's dusty plywood floor. Within seconds, the toe of his sneaker was caught in the snakelike cable, sending him hurtling headlong toward the cabinet he had intended to quietly search.
Nick threw both arms outward, successfully catching himself by grabbing hold of a large cardboard box that rested against the adjacent wall. He immediately identified the mattress-sized parcel as the container for the Brunelle Construction sign.
He also recognized that, in his effort to brace his fall, he had mutilated an entire corner of the package, revealing, through the torn layers of corrugated paper, a faint glimmer of silver.
Stella followed the sound of country music to a darkly stained plywood door. Not wishing to invade Betsy's privacy, she gave the door a quick rap. "Betsy? Hello?"
Despite the sounds of footsteps on the floor above, there was no reply.
Stella debated whether or not she should knock again. Determining that a double homicide was a suitable excuse for a breech in etiquette, and fearful of Jake's imminent return, she opened the door and climbed the narrow stairwell to the second floor.
At the top of the staircase, Stella was met with yet another door and, behind it, the smell of food emanating from a well-designed galley kitchen. Betsy, her back to the stairwell, was leaning over a small ceramic cooktop, singing along with the music of an unseen stereo. On the counter beside her rested a plate of flour riddled with meat drippings, a large butcher's knife, and a cutting board stacked with onion, celery, and carrots.
"Betsy," Stella called as she watched the dark-haired woman sprinkle something over the Dutch oven of browning meat. "Betsy?"
The woman whirled around in surprise, knocking the pan of meat off the burner and onto the linoleum-tiled floor.
"I'm sorry, Betsy. I didn't mean to-" Stella apologized until she noticed the yellow box of d-Con rodent poison in Betsy's right hand.
Before Stella could say another word, Betsy seized the butcher's knife from the cutting board and lunged forward.
"Nick!" Stella screamed as she stepped backward and held her arms up to defend herself. "Nick!"
Betsy took a stab at her chest, but Stella, her back against the closed stairway door, managed to roll her shoulders and torso out of the way. Reaching up, she clasped Betsy's arm tightly and, with one foot flat against the door for added leverage, used all her strength to try and push the knife-wielding woman away.
Betsy, however, was tenacious, and the two women, each straining to gain the upper hand, remained deadlocked for what seemed like an eternity. Stella, red faced and perspiring, felt the strength in her arms slowly start to drain and her grip on Betsy's arm gradually loosen.
As she struggled to think of her next move, an incredible force sent her tumbling forward onto her assailant. Betsy, unable to retain her balance, fell backward onto the linoleum floor, the impact of the hard surface knocking the knife from her grasp.
Stella, having landed at Betsy's feet with a loud grunt, quickly rose from her prone position and scrambled on her hands and knees for the knife. Betsy, meanwhile, rolled onto her stomach and extended an arm toward the weapon, her fingertips landing upon the black forged handle before Stella could get close enough to reach for it.
Stella caught her breath and braced herself for another attack. But just as Betsy raised the knife, a sneaker-clad foot came down upon her back, pinning her to the floor.
Panting and sweating, Stella looked up to see Nick standing over them. "Are you okay?"
She nodded and rose to her feet. "I think so."
Betsy, meanwhile, began to scream. "Get off of me! Let me go!"
Retrieving the knife as he did so, Nick bent down and pulled Betsy off the linoleum floor by her arm. "You try to kill my wife and you want me to let you go? I don't think so."
"I won't try to hurt you again, I promise," she sobbed. "I just don't want to go to jail."
"Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to feed your husband rat poison," Stella rebuked.
"You don't understand. You don't know what it's like. Jake was going to talk."
"Talk about what?" Nick confronted her. "How you killed Weston? Or how you worked together to steal the frame?"
"She stole the frame?" Stella said in disbelief.
"It's downstairs in that big box that supposedly held their new sign. But it wasn't a sign, was it, Betsy? It was the replacement frame for Weston's mirror."
"You don't understand!"
"No? Why don't you explain it to us?" Stella offered.
"I loved Allen, I really did. He was better to me than any other man I'd ever known. He bought me presents and flowers and ... he appreciated me. We had planned to run away together and leave this place ... this hellhole where all I do is slave. But then ... then I found out about her."
"Who?"
"Who do you think? Alma Deville. I went there one night to surprise Allen-Jake was working late-and her car was in his driveway."
"So you decided to take revenge."
"I wanted him dead for the way he treated me. For leading me to think-to think my life could ever get any better. I thought about doing it a few times, but I always lost the nerve. When he suggested we meet at your house, I saw my chance. It was perfect: empty, isolated. I even asked him to act out a little fantasy of mine, just so he didn't suspect anything was wrong."
Nick was incredulous. "You slept with him that day just so you could kill him?"
"Oh no, I would have slept with him anyway. It's a shame I had to kill him; the sex was incredible."
"Yeah, we've heard."
"And the frame? When did you come up with that idea?" Stella prompted.
"Around the same time. If I was going be stuck with my husband, I wasn't going to do it flat broke. Allen told me how much that thing was worth. Used to brag about how he stole it from right under Maggie Lawson's nose and how she'd never figure out it was the frame and not the painting that was valuable."
"But you couldn't steal it on your own. It was too heavy and cumbersome, so you recruited your husband to help. How'd you manage that?"
"I know Allen's housekeeper. I convinced Jake that she was the one who had told me about the frame. Jake hated Allen for taking away our business, so it wasn't hard to put him up to it."
"How did he get in? Did you give him your key?"
"No. Weston didn't give out keys," she replied matter-of-factly. "I climbed in the bathroom window."
Stella, crestfallen, looked at Nick.
"I'm still impressed, honey," he assured her. "Besides, you're cuter and, not to mention, saner."
Betsy frowned at him before continuing. "I unlocked the front door and left it open so that all he had to do was walk in, and then I rushed back here before anyone noticed I was gone. Jake could handle the frame, but I knew if I left the front-door thing to him, he'd goof it up."